If it hadn’t been for a temporary closure due to Tet, Vietnam’s Lunar New Year celebration, we would have visited Kim Hoa Hue even sooner. The prospect of a rare central Vietnamese restaurant in SoCal that exists outside of Little Saigon intrigued us, especially if it’s good.

To start, we split a generous helping of Hue Combo ($5.75), a combination of beo, nam, loc, tom chay and cha that was all fish sauce friendly. Banh Beo consisted of relatively thick rice flour cakes topped with shredded shrimp, scallions and crunchy squiggles of pork rind. Banh Nah is basically a Vietnamese “tamale,” with rice flour instead of masa, embedded with ground shrimp and pork. Banh Uot Tom Chay were delicate rice paper rolls folded around pan fried, shredded shrimp. We weren’t especially enamored with Banh Bot Loc la, chewy, glutinous “cakes” that capture shrimp and pork like amber. We also had issues with Banh Uot cha Lua, firm slices of pork sausage that tasted like wannabe bologna.

Nem Nuong Cuon ($5) were spring rolls with translucent rice paper cradling slabs of charbroiled pork meatball, lettuce and a crunchy core that we enjoyed with fish sauce.

Bun Bo Hue ($6.50 large) brought a respectable amount of funk and spice to a vermicelli soup that also touted assorted cuts of beef and pork, shaved onion and cilantro. We squeezed lime to bring some brightness to the bowl, and bean sprouts added crunch.

Bun Mit Mam Nem ($6) didn’t have as much intensity as some of our other plates, but we enjoyed the dried vermicelli bowl with ground shrimp, pork paste and young jack fruit, which often gets described as “meaty,” but reminds us more of artichoke hearts.

At central Vietnamese restaurants, my eyes inevitably wander to menu options involving baby clams. At Kim Hoa Hue, they had a satisfying version of Com Hen hoac Bun Hen ($6), broken rice with briny baby clams, cilantro, cilantro, peanuts, crispy pork rinds and more.

Of course rarity isn’t enough of a reason to visit an establishment. Quality also has to be there, and even though the Hue-inspired cookery we experienced El Monte didn’t match some of the central Vietnamese restaurants that exist in contiguous Orange County towns like Westminster and Garden Grove, we’d still suggest visiting Kim Hoa Hue.